Monday, 25 January 2010

She runs over something in the road, perhaps a dog, or was it something else, a child?A death is at the center of the labyrinth.Persephone drives on, into the suddenly pelting rain.

At the center of the labyrinth, shocked, in a fog, in her car, becoming the mistress of the underworld. Her domain now the kingdom of ghosts.

"The house is full of the dead -- ignore them and they will leave," mumbles her demented mother, who is perhaps Demeter.Argentine director Lucrecia Martel's film is a dream of disembodiment, drifting in and out of focus. Back and forth across the shadowland between death and life. At Knossos, in Minoan Crete, Persephone, the mistress of the underworld, presided over the ritual enactment. A roofless dancing ground was spoken of as "the labyrinth".A dry arroyo that is suddenly flooded with a confusion of memory.To all the gods honey, reads a tablet inscription at the foot of a female figure at Knossos. To the mistress of the labyrinth, honey.Karl Kerenyi tells us that to the Minoans, honey was equated with divine blood. The ritual gift.I remembered the haunting images of this film as if viewing through a clouded glass scenes from another life.

9 comments:

Tom,Thanks for this, which suggests (to me) what the ridge "drifting in and out of focus" ('view' might mean, how motion of shadowed wet green leaves in foreground are in the "shadowland between/ death and life."

1.25

grey whiteness of cloud against invisibleridge, motion of shadowed leaf on branchin foreground, sound of wave in channel

Legend has it that Cromwell's troops stopped by the house that was on the site at the time hunting royalists. Finding the house devoid of its owner the troops questioned the housekeeper. When she refused to reveal her master's whereabouts they beheaded her. Regular reports of her ghostly, headless torso roaming the area abound to this day.

Been travelling a little on the road. Just came back. Very cold !! After reading this post this came to the numb fingers.

I haven't watched the movie you talk of. This post but triggers the onset of unsure emotions spliced into each other. Everthing coalesces into unknown lines curling up into further unknown streaks. A lot like a labyrinth. Labyrinths are different Tom. You know it when it is one.

While riding pillon at 100kph on a dusty mountain road, the smell of beer is exciting. Until you realize you are not the only one who is drunk. Then you are on the lookout for seemingly congruent curves more often. Peccadilloes on the tar beneath even more.

The benumbed driver in the film, a professional person and plainly a character meant to be representative of the new Argentine bourgeoisie (keep in mind this is a country that before the past decade or two did not have a middle class, only the small upper and the large lower -- from which her victim comes), finds herself lost in a labyrinth of guilt, doubt, distraction and lies.

Had you, in your crazy mountain road beer labyrinth, been riding on her road, and run over by her, it would have been a curious collision of labyrinths.

With a bit of shame I have to admit that I haven't seen none of my compatriot films...Though, this was no obstacle at all for enjoying your post very much!You may like this children's short-story that has some connections... geometrical connections, with all this. Here